Prospect online this week: British Islam after Rushdie

Following this month’s interview in the magazine between Kenan Malik and Hanif Kureishi, who discussed the impact of the Rushdie affair on British Islam in particular and British writing in general, we have a web-exclusive article from Anshuman A Mondal based on his recent book Young British Muslim Voices (Greenwood), in which he travelled around Britain talking to “ordinary” (that is, non-Islamist) British Muslims about their lives and faith. The conventional image of conflict within British Islam—that its greatest divide is between secular “British” values and religious “Islamic” ones—is, Mondal concluded, incorrect. Instead, he argues, its main fault lines are generational: between the first generations of immigrants who arrived here, largely from the Indian subcontinent, in the 1960s and 1970s, and the generations who have grown up and come of age here since, and whose formative experiences include the Rushdie affair, 9/11 and 7/7.

It’s a thesis that chimes uneasily with Kureishi’s observation that “Nobody would have the balls today to write The Satanic Verses, let alone publish it. Writing is now timid because writers are now terrified.” In many ways, Islam’s generational conflict has been one of a new, younger generation of British Asians striking back against the conventional—and, as they saw it, humiliatingly outmoded—image of what it meant to be an Asian as well as a Muslim in Britain. Kureishi, though, has proved a dazzling interrogator and subverter of these intentions: an author who not only put young British Asians into the heart of literary fiction, but who also had the clarity of vision to depict them as both heroic and venal, straight and homosexual, progressive and corrupt. As he puts it, “It was a new idea of being Asian… not the traditional notion of victims cowering in the corner. I wanted to show that Asians were not all progressive or nice—so I had [in one character] an Asian as a vicious Thatcherite.”

For Mondal, at its best the thinking of young British Muslims has a deep “emphasis on individuality and choice” and a potential to move beyond limiting alleigances to the either/or politics of religion/secularism, British/Asian. The long shadows of the Rushdie affair, however, also suggest that religiosity can find a discomfitingly fertile breeding ground in the generational divides within…

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Comments

Iftikhar Ahmad

March 31, 2009 at 23:02

The western "values" suggest equality and freedom for all, that means society must allow religious freedom. The Christians and Jews have Church/ Jewish schools as well as kosher meat, yet when Muslims simply ask for the very same treatment,the Islamphobic secular right wing jump up and down screaming that somehow western values have been attacked.
The Jews throughout the western world have their own religious courts. Christians have been enjoying the right to be married in Church. Muslims should have the same right to get married in Masajid as well as they need Sharia Courts, dealing in marriage, civil matters and divorce.
It is easy to say" Go back to where you came from",but do not forget that British Muslims are actually born and educated here. They are in the unenviable position of trying to combine two diffent worlds. That is no easy.
Multiculturalism is not about separation, ghettoisation or balkanisation. It is, instead, a recognition of both diversity and the need for common ground, mutual respect,and cultural engagement.
Muslims all over the world never opposed English as a language what they did was opposition of the Western culture and their system of education. In Pakistan, the medium of instruction is Urdu and English and the official language is both English and Urdu. Pakistan is going to send English teachers to Korea for the teaching of English language.
Muslim parents would like their children to be well versed in standard English to follow the National Curriculum and go for higher studies and research to serve humanity.
Majority of Muslim children leave schools with low grades because state schools with monolingual teachers are not capable of teaching English to bilingual children.At the same time, they need to learn and be well versed in Arabic, Urdu and other community languages to keep in touch with their cultural roots and enjoy the beauty of their literature and poetry.
I am concerned with the education of the Muslim children. It is nothing to do with integration or segregation. Those state as well as Church schools where Muslim children are in majority, in my opinion, may be designated as Muslim community schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models.
Bilingual Muslim children need state funded Muslim schools with bilingual Muslim teachers as role models during their developmental periods. There is no place for a non-Muslim child or a teacher in a Muslim school.
Iftikhar Ahmad
www.londonschoolofislamics.org.uk

Bashy Quraishy

April 15, 2009 at 23:50

Basically I agree with Mr A Mondal's analysis and conclusions about the difference in opinions and personal experiences in the British society between first generation religious and ethnic minorities and their children. My contacts and their stories in many EU countries however reveal another hidden fact. Both groups are struggling to be accepted in European societies even if they react differently to the challenges facing them. They use different tools and methods but results are mostly the same - disintegration, marginalization and lack of opportunities. And as long as equal rights and equal responsibilities do not go hand in hand with equal chances in the labour market, social sector and school system, the true picture of disappointments would be missing form the public eye.
The second point which I would like to point out is that while Hanif Kureshi, Salamn Rushdi, Ed Hussain and some other "Ethnic intellectuals" are so busy in distancing themselves from their ethnic roots but to make money, they always write about ethnic issues, especially Islam and Muslim communities. On top of that for their own political agenda, they put all Muslims in one basket even if they know that Muslims come from 60 different countries, have diverse historical, linguistic and cultural as well as religious background.
The same mistake is being committed time and again by authorities, government policy makers, media and even Muslim religious leaders as well as NGOs. When it comes to describing Muslim communities, there is little nuance, balance and rationality. Terminologies like Jihadist, militants, Euro-Islam and now Islamists is thrown around freely by those who talk about integration and inclusive society. Does not anyone care that these words are hurtful, insulting and misleading to majority of Muslims? These terminologies are western construction with the sole purpose of demonizing Islam and Muslim communities. Islam is a religion and not an ethnicity or nationality. You can not have British Islam, USA Islam or a Danish Islam. Europe and the West has to accept Islam as a religion and part of the society. It has good and peaceful followers who are majority and a tiny portion extremists who have their own political agenda and do not and should not speak for Islam. It is exactly like any other religion.
In the end, I would like to point out that it is absolutely non-sense of anyone to claim that most writers and artists want to keep their heads down and not criticise Islam. Mr Kureshi should travel a little more in Europe and keep a close eye on the media to notice that every day lots of horrible things are being said, written and shown on TV about Islam and Muslims. Things no one would dare to say about any other religion, community and group.
There is no example of anyone with Muslim background putting a bomb in anyones letterbox. So please use your pen to create a true harmonious society instead of
coming up with scare mongering exaggerations about Muslims.
Bashy Quraishy
Chair - ENAR Advisory Council-Brussels
Chair - Jewish Muslim Platform-Brussels
Mobile. 0045 40154771.
Tel&Fax. 0045 38881977
www.bashy.dk

Marc Latham

April 18, 2009 at 10:20

Multiculturalism became a kind of religion in the UK after New Labour came to power on its slogan in 1997.
Britain had been multicultural for centuries, but the New Labour spin doctors turned it into a mantra.
Those who would later accuse those same spin doctors of being liars because of the Iraq war would not hear a word said against New Labour’s spinning of multiculturalism.
To criticise it left you open to accusations of racism, and it was used quite often to justify the Nato bombing of the new defunct Yugoslavia during the Kosovo conflict.
Kosovo was a similarly illegal war to Iraq, but is now forgotten because it was considered a war for multiculturalism, while Iraq was the opposite.
Although there are probably five big prejudices: race, gender, sexuality, class and age, over the first ten years of New Labour’s government race became all embracing.
I would say that it took over about 80% of prejudice coverage in politics and the media, although that is just a guess.
While anything with a hint of racism was likely to receive coverage in the news, gender crime is much more prevalent yet is never categorised as such.
This concentration on race meant that other prejudices were allowed to increase in the UK.
Some of the people protected by multiculturalism’s bias towards them used that cover to increase sexism and homophobia, and racism against other ethnic groups.
I think that prejudice should be the key word, and not racism.
Protection and promotion should be divided equally between the big five prejudices, and those who profit from being in one group open to prejudice should not be allowed to use their position to undermine others vulnerable to prejudice.

Abdennour Belhaouchet

April 22, 2009 at 12:30

There are two sides of the problem concerning British Muslims and Islam in Britain, and the endeavour of British politicians, decision makers and intellectuals. While it's necessary to highlight that British Muslims have been offered countless chances and opportunities to progress, develop and integrate in their new home, due to the oppeness, tolerance, and the long-lived experience of the British in living and accepting other cultures, religions..etc. It is misleading to suggest that many British Muslims did not jump at those chances, but it remains a long way ahead for them to fully develop and progress. Or else, how can we explain that other British communities are doing better (Hindus,Sikhs,..etc). The key thing for British Muslims is that they failed to reach a consensus on what should they embrace, British secular values, or Islamist dogmas? Moderate Islamic values don't dissallow the incorporation of modern British secular values. What is the problem with British courts? and getting Muslims marriages put in the registrars? Did early prosecuted Muslims in the reign of the Ethiopean king ask for Muslim courts and the shari'ah to be applied?
Islam is one religion, but let's not mix things up, the religion should be adopted to British, or whatever country, norms, values, culture those that are good of course, and this is what is meant by British Islam, or French Islam. Is it fair to try to import Islamic experience of the Saudis in Britain? embracing secular British values and norms is the key and solution for fragmentalised Islam in Britain, along with enjoying Islamic values and beliefs. For Islamism proved to be a lethal experiance in many parts of the world, so how can it be fruitful in Britain?
A big responsibility also is on the British to get British Muslims out of their getthos, quarentine and no-access streets. A lot has to be done to fight racism, discremination, and Islamophobia. British people, and decision makers should be confident and display fabulous British values, don't dump them it is the right time to invite and engage people to embrace them. An extraordinary language, fun and humourous spirit, the polite nation on the globe,with nice and polite and tactful manners, the nation of an affectionate Charles Dickens and warm and caring Jane Austin.

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